Three Faculty to Join PACE in Fall 2018

The School of Public Affairs and Civic Engagment is pleased to announce that three new faculty members will be joining PACE in Fall 2018.  See short bios of the faculty below.

Aritree Samanta (Climate change and urban adaptation) is an interdisciplinary scholar with research focus in the areas of collaborative approaches to urban and environmental governance, adaptive management, and institutional response to disruptions through adaptation and transformation. She holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Public Affairs from the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University and an M.A. in Social Work from the University of Delhi, India. In her current postdoctoral position at Purdue University, she studies social dimensions of watershed management focusing on the intersections between climate change, water quality, and land use management in the Midwest. Her professional work in India included research projects in the areas of urban sustainability and climate change adaptation in low-income communities. In the United States, she has held fellowship and research positions with the Alliance for the Great Lakes in Chicago, IL and the Northeast Midwest Institute in Washington D.C.

Angelica Camacho (National security and racialization) is the current Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She is also a former Ford Dissertation Fellow, and received a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside. In 2010, she acquired a B.A. in both Chicana/o Studies and Black Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was the injustices present in her community, and her desire to understand, explain, and transform them that drove her to pursue a career in Ethnic Studies. Today she shares Ethnic Studies’ commitment to intellectual praxis and social justice. Her current research is on the Pelican Bay California Prisoner Hunger Strikes by incarcerated people and the subsequent uprising of their families. Additionally, Angelica simultaneously explores how the War on Drugs and the criminalization of Latinx communities has contributed to the rise of the carceral state and prison industrial complex in California. Her intellectual work aims to shift the dominant narratives of criminality that target and scapegoat communities of color into counter-hegemonic narratives that highlight social struggles for life and liberation.

Carina Gallo (CJ Administration and Advocacy) is an Associate Professor of Criminology and the Criminology Program Coordinator at Holy Names University in Oakland. She is also a Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. Carina’s interdisciplinary research addresses historical and international trends in crime and welfare policy, with particular attention to how policies and laws intending to support underrepresented and marginalized groups have developed over the last century. She is currently working on a book exploring the roots of the Swedish victim movement.  Carina is dedicated to exploring and applying innovative teaching practices, such as cross-cultural learning. She is particularly interested in how technology can globalize the curriculum and has led virtual international exchanges (VIEs) where students in different countries learn together in a virtual classroom. In addition, Carina has several years of professional experience as a social worker, policy evaluator, and leader in the non-profit community.

 

 

 

 

Energy Justice & Sustainability PACE Students participate in the Solar Suitecase Project

In Fall 2017, Dr. Thoyre’s Energy Justice & Sustainability (ENVS 460) course participated in a service learning project to reduce poverty, fight climate change, and mentor the next generation of energy justice advocates. After learning about the environmental injustices associated with many non-renewable energy systems, students participated in a lab where they learned to wire together a battery, charge controller, LED light bulb, and solar photovoltaic unit, creating a user-friendly, portable solar energy kit known as a Solar Suitcase. They then mentored K-12 students at Thomas R. Pollicita Middle School (Daly City) and Lincoln High School (San Francisco) in building more of the suitcases. Some of these suitcases will in turn be shipped to hospitals, refugee centers, orphanages, or schools in parts of the world with inadequate electricity, where they will contribute to sustainable development. Students in ENVS 460 also initiated a project to use the solar suitcases to teach kids at Bay Area Boys & Girls Clubs about renewable energy.

The Solar Suitcase project was originally developed out of a partnership between faculty at CSU-East Bay, the NGO We Share Solar, the electric utility PG&E, and others. The purpose was to reduce energy poverty while getting students from historically underrepresented communities involved in STEM. This year, SFSU is one of several CSUs piloting an expansion of the project, and Dr. Thoyre’s course is the first social science course to use the solar suitcases. The project demonstrates that if even a middle schooler can build a solar energy system, the question of why we don’t use more renewable energy is largely a political, economic, and social question, not a narrowly technical one. The project has thus been a key case study for students in ENVS 460 to critically reflect on the relationships between energy, inequalities, and politics.